Dead Girls Are Easy Page 3

  “That’s all I can tell you, Mister…um, sir. Byebye.”

  Then I turned and ran like hell, ignoring Morty’s delayed shout. “Miss…miss…come back…”

  I ran all the way to my car. I’d parked it at the base of the hill outside the cemetery where the shade was thickest, far enough away that no one could easily read the license number, but not so far that I couldn’t reach it pretty quick.

  I thought I was home free when I grabbed the door handle?until someone called my name.

  “Nicki!”

  “Dr. Bascombe?” I couldn’t believe the timing. “What are you doing here?”

  He was wearing a black suit. Dolce and Gabbana, unless I missed my guess. The tie was a blue patterned silk, crisply knotted. He looked well-tailored and well-off, and so unlike the two previous times we’d met that it was no wonder I hadn’t recognized him among the mourners. Just showed how eager I was to be rid of Irene that I could miss a hunk like that, even if corporate boy toy wasn’t my usual taste.

  “Call me Joe.” He smiled, and my heart did that annoying flip thing it does. At least now I knew why?not true love, just a heart defect. “Irene Goldblatt’s obituary was in the paper. I came to pay my respects.” He hesitated. “But I was really looking for you.”

  My radar went up. “As my doctor or…” I let the question dangle, very curious to hear the answer. A quick glance at the mirrored surface of my car window confirmed I was looking pretty good?hardly the weak, pale creature he’d known in the hospital. I’d just run down a hill and was barely out of breath. My heart was as reliably unreliable as ever, so why was Dr. Handsome looking for me?

  “Research, actually.” I blinked at my reflection, not expecting that one. “I’m going to write that paper on near death experiences, and I wondered whether you’d consider being my first test subject.”

  “Your what?” The words “test” and “subject” were not in my vocabulary. “I really don’t like the sound of that.”

  So much for my delusions of vanity?Mr. Cute Doctor was there to do a sanity check.

  “You should see your face.” Joe grinned, looking truly amused. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I was just hoping you’d agree to an interview so I could record your experience. Your impressions, your feelings.” He leaned against my car and kept talking. “How it’s changed you.”

  I still didn’t like the sound of this, and I liked even less that he’d hit on the one thing that was bothering me. For the experience had changed me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be changed.

  “No thanks, Doc.” I unlocked the car door and opened it, forcing him to step back a pace. “I’ve already forgotten most of it, and I’m the same old Nicki Styx I was before. No life-changing revelations here.”

  “Oh, really?” The skeptical tone of his voice was unmistakable. I turned, hand on the door.

  “I suppose the old Nicki Styx was in the habit of approaching grieving widowers and singing the theme from a seventies sitcom?”

  I was mortified. He’d seen me make a fool of myself. “Laverne and Shirley,” I said icily. “And it’s none of your business what my habits are. I do a lovely rendition of Gilligan’s Island, too?but I save that one for bar mitzvahs.”

  Joe burst out laughing, unimpressed with my sarcasm. He had a great laugh, rich and full. It made it hard to hold onto my annoyance, especially when his eyes invited me to laugh with him.

  “Be quiet,” I hissed, glancing back at the cemetery, toward the headstones. “You’re laughing loud enough to?” I tried hard to keep a straight face. “?wake the dead.”

  He laughed even harder, and this time I joined in, the ridiculousness of the situation covering any awkwardness.

  “Miss…miss…are you here?”

  Morty’s voice floated down the hill. In a sudden panic, I slid into my car and pulled the door shut. “I’m sorry,” I said over my shoulder to Joe, “but I gotta go.”

  A single click came from the ignition, but the car didn’t start. I twisted the key the other way and tried again, but it wasn’t happening.

  “Dammit!”

  “We can take my car. It’s right around the corner.”

  I shot Joe a look.

  “How about it?” He obviously wasn’t the type of guy to waste an opportunity. “I get you out of here and you jump-start my long-delayed paper on near death experiences. It’s a fair trade, isn’t it?”

  “Sounds like blackmail to me.”

  “I’ll throw in a cup of coffee,” he added cheerfully.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  There was a thrashing in the bushes, as though a wild animal sought to free itself from a trap. The cemetery gate was several yards away, but it appeared as though a determined Morty was about to find it.

  Desperate, I jumped from the car and snatched Joe by the arm. “Which way?”

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me down the street. When we reached the corner, he pointed his keys toward a black BMW parked by the curb and unlocked it with a discreet beep. I reluctantly let go of his big, warm hand and dove into the passenger side, breathing deep of the leather interior.

  More black. My favorite.

  A minute later we were two blocks away, leaving Morty Goldblatt and Rodeph Shalom Cemetery far behind.

  “Things were getting a little sticky back there.” I stopped glancing over my shoulder and relaxed into the seat, giving Joe a grin. “That’s the second time you’ve saved my life.”

  “Not true.” His face was somber. “I declared you dead. Then you took in a deep breath and let it out,” he smiled and shook his head, “and then another one.” For a moment his gaze slipped inward, as though he was thinking of something else. “You’re a miracle.”

  “Gee, Doc?maybe you can take that into account when you send me the bill, hm? My insurance premiums are killing me.”

  “Joe, remember? And you should see the cost of malpractice insurance.” He kept his voice light, shooting glances at me as he drove. “But enough boring doctor talk. You already know about me, but I don’t know much about you. What do you do? International fashion model, perhaps?”

  Before I could respond, he added, “That’s a great outfit, by the way.”

  I’d dressed for comfort today in gray pinstriped pants and low-heeled boots, teamed with a white silk T-shirt and an oversized jacket. It gave me the boyishly feminine look that was one of my favorites.

  “Are you flirting with me, Joe?” I’d always found directness gave me an advantage. Most guys didn’t know how to handle it.

  “What if I am?”

  He guided the car into a parking space in front of a local coffee shop, then turned it off, giving me his full attention.

  The moment stretched while I met his eyes, considering. No question?he was a good-looking man. But he was also part of a world I avoided, the world of responsibility and conformity, of country club politics and starched shirts.

  “We have to lay some ground rules,” I said. “The first one being that if you flirt with me you might get hurt, and you have to be okay with that.”

  Joe unbuckled his seat belt, smiling. “Are you trying to tell me you’ll break my heart?”

  I looked at him very seriously. “No. I’m trying to tell you that I like to play with my lovers, and sometimes I play rough.” I gave him a wicked grin, going from nice to naughty in a split-second. “I doubt you know what you’d be getting yourself into, boy toy.”

  He watched as I slid out of the car. I leaned back in before closing the door. “As for your heart?you can keep it. It’s not the part of your anatomy I’m interested in.”

  The look on Dr. Handsome’s face was priceless, no matter how fleeting. It wouldn’t do for him to form any impressions about me that weren’t true?I wasn’t the kind of girl he’d take home to his mama, and I didn’t wanna be. I was having too much fun being young and single, and if I enjoyed being a little on the wild side, I wasn’t going to hide it.

  “Did you just call me ‘bo
y toy’?” His head popped up on the other side of the car pretty quickly. He shut the door and walked toward me.

  I grinned, waiting for him to catch up.

  “Surely I’m not the first.”

  He looked vaguely pleased, but cautious, uncertain whether to take my remarks seriously. “You’re a very interesting woman, Nicki. Quite a dichotomy.”

  We’d reached the door of the coffee shop. He held it open, and I flapped a hand at him as I passed. “Don’t try to impress me with those big words, Doc. There’s nothing contradictory about me?what you see is what you get.”

  “I hope so,” I heard him murmur. “And the name is Joe.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Evan was checking out the new dresses I’d brought him after an afternoon of thrift store shopping. He’d laid them all on the bed and was eyeing them keenly, but I knew he was just as interested in hearing about my coffee date as he was in examining sequins and stitching. “Did you scare him away with your ‘ball-buster’ routine, or was the good doctor ready to bend over and cough?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Evan knew me so well.

  “Don’t be crude.” He shot me a wicked sideways glance, knowing he was outrageous. “He bought me coffee, broke out a tape recorder and started asking me questions about what happened in the hospital.” I picked up a red-beaded evening gown. “What do you think of this one? Nineteen forties, maybe?”

  Evan shook his head. “Fifties. It needs relining, but once I’ve replaced some of those beads and had it cleaned, it’ll be a show stopper. We’ll put it on Jayne, and stand her in the front window.” One of Evan’s artist friends had turned our bland, anonymous store mannequins into glamorous replicas of early film stars. It didn’t hurt the shop’s funky reputation to have our restored vintage gowns displayed by Jayne Mansfield, Jean Harlowe, or Audrey Hepburn.

  “We talked for about an hour?he asked a bunch of questions about my parents, where I grew up, stuff like that. I guess he had to rule out my being some kind of weirdo.”

  “What was he doing at the funeral, anyway?” Evan was checking the hem on a tea-length peach chiffon but stopped, rolling his eyes at the stupidity of his own question. “What am I saying? He couldn’t resist the devilish Nicki Styx any more than the rest of the male population of Atlanta?that’s what he was doing there.”

  I reached out and pinched Evan’s perfect behind before he could swing it out of reach. “You’re just jealous, sweetie. I saw you eyeing him while you were hovering over me in the hospital. Maybe you could join a survivor support group and meet somebody that way. You know, the ‘Gay Men and the Women Who Love Them but Don’t Have the Grace to Die’ group.”

  That earned me a sniff. “I am not jealous, and don’t joke about dying like that.” Evan dropped the gown he was holding and walked out of the room, heading toward the kitchen. “Now I have to pour myself a glass of wine to steady my nerves.”

  I trailed after him, absently admiring his apartment, as I’d done so many times before. The art deco furniture was all authentic, down to the black lacquer coffee table and white leather sofa. A gorgeous glass skyscraper cabinet was filled with handpicked pieces of Lalique, while framed vintage prints added splashes of color to the walls. It was spotless, and about as far from my messy, hodgepodge place as you could get.

  “Here you go.” Evan poured two glasses of chardonnay and offered me one. I almost took it, then shook my head.

  “I need to cut back?doctor’s orders.”

  An arched eyebrow from Evan spoke volumes. “You’re taking orders now? My, my. That’s not like you?you must like the guy more than you’re saying. When are you seeing him again?”

  I shrugged, settling myself on a red and black bar stool.

  “I dunno. He was a perfect gentleman, after all,” here I flashed him a grin, “and I’m not really into gentlemen.”

  Evan took another sip of wine, and a different tack. “What about your car? Did you have it towed?”

  “No. It was the funniest thing?Joe took me back there to see if it would start, and after he fiddled around under the hood for a minute, it started right up.”

  “Hmm.” Evan’s grunt sounded noncommittal, but I knew better.

  “What?”

  “Your gentleman doctor knows his way around cars, huh?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Kinda funny he just happened to be there when it wouldn’t start. Had it been giving you trouble?”

  I shook my head, suspicion growing.

  “Can’t be too much harder to connect a battery cable or an ignition wire than it is to disconnect one, can it?” Evan gave me a bland look across the kitchen counter, wineglass dangling from his fingers.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” I murmured. “Looks like Joe Bascombe has a naughty side after all.”

  “I don’t know if I like this, Nick.” Evan started pacing, his standard method of dealing with worry. “Things are getting weirder and weirder. You almost died, you’ve been hallucinating, and now your doctor is following you around?”

  “I am not hallucinating,” I snapped. “And if I was, I’m not anymore.” Irene Goldblatt was gone, that much I was sure of. I couldn’t argue about the weirdness, but I was grateful I hadn’t told Evan just how weird things had gotten. No need for him to worry his pretty little head about me unnecessarily. “The good doctor has made it clear he wants help with his paper, and if he wants more than that he’ll have to work for it.”

  “Then why are you helping him at all?”

  I was ready with a snappy comeback about manly bulges, but I didn’t say it. Instead, I told Evan the truth.

  “Because something happened to me that I don’t understand.” I reached across the counter and caught his hand in mine, both for its familiar comfort and to stop his pacing. “It was?” I searched for the word. “?incredible. Not just what I saw, but what I felt, what I heard…what I knew.”

  His face softened, worry lines easing. I’d already told him about the near death experience?more than once?but I hadn’t told him everything. It seemed obvious to me that I’d returned from my trip to the Light with a passenger, but the first time I’d mentioned Irene, Evan was ready to call in the shrinks. So I’d shut up about my promise to a dead woman, only telling him I was attending her funeral out of morbid curiosity. But Evan was my best friend, and I wanted him to understand that something profoundly life-changing had happened to me, even if I didn’t fully understand all the implications yet.

  “Okay,” he murmured, squeezing my fingers. “But you keep me informed, you hear? I wanna know immediately if you start seeing more dead people or if this doctor guy gets too pushy.” Evan’s expression went from worried to playful. He glanced over his shoulder toward the hallway, keeping his voice lowered. “Butch has a leather biker’s outfit he wears to fetish night at The Olympiad?I’m sure he’d use it to scare away Dr. Goodbody if I asked him nicely.”

  “Butch?” My eyebrows rose along with my curiosity. “There’s someone here?”

  Evan waved a negligent hand. “Oh, don’t worry…he’s in the shower. And besides, he’s a love?body like a tank and the mind of a flower child. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, but most people don’t know that.”

  Evan’s taste had always run to the extreme end of the spectrum. Manly men who made him feel like a girly girl seemed to be the norm.

  “No thanks.” I got up from the bar stool, ready to head home. “But you enjoy.”

  My house seemed emptier than usual, and I didn’t like the feeling. Strange, because I’d always enjoyed solitude. Now the quiet seemed too loud, the living room too big, the pile of mail by the door too much trouble to sort through.

  I tossed my keys on the coffee table and set my bag beside them before flopping down on the couch. Closing my eyes, I saw again in my mind the stone sentinels and shaded benches of Rodeph Shalom Cemetery. The silence there had been peaceful, but the silence here was just…empty.

  “Crap.”

 
Depression had never been a problem for me, even after my parents died. They’d loved each other dearly, loved me even more, and when they died together on a rainy stretch of road, I’d taken comfort from those things. And Evan, of course. It was hard to be sad around Evan.

  But Evan wasn’t there, and neither was anyone else.

  “Double crap.”

  Why now? Was I really so changed by my own brush with death? If anything, I should have been relieved to know that life goes on after the body gives out. Instead, I was bothered by a nagging sense that I was missing something in the here-and-now.

  I was lonely. And being lonely sucked.

  Irene had “her Morty.” Evan had Butch, even if his leather-clad flower child was only one bloom in a long daisy chain of lovers. I’d had my own smaller string of blossoming relationships, each plucked and dropped without any care for what happened when they fell. I’d even taken pleasure in grinding a few under the stiletto heels of my favorite boots.

  There’d only been one guy who’d ever meant anything to me: Erik Mitchell, from my senior year in high school. I thought we’d be together forever, but the only souvenir I had of that relationship was a broken heart tattoo and an aversion to cute little cheerleaders named Cindy.

  “Oh, my God.” I sat up, shoving my hair back with my fingers. “You’re pathetic, woman. Enough of the cry-baby routine, already.”

  My eye fell on my purse, a great find at a garage sale earlier in the year. Genuine Rosenfeld, black velvet with a cameo clasp. And inside?inside might just be the cure for momentary melancholy. I snatched it up and rummaged around until I found the square of white I was looking for.

  Then I picked up the phone and dialed, a wicked little smile already lifting my lips and my spirits.

  “Joe? It’s Nicki. Are you busy tonight?”

  CHAPTER 3

  The Vortex is a well-known hangout down in the Atlanta neighborhood of Little Five Points. Evan and I were regulars, and I was thrilled to find out that an all-girl band called The Cherries was headlining. The happy hour crowd was gone, and the place was hopping with night owls just like me?mostly women, girls who just wanted to have fun. The beat of the music was deep and hypnotic, loud enough to feel, but in a good way.